Foreword/Introduction

People who  prefer to spend holidays outside the usual environment, fall mainly into three categories: hotel guests, tourists and travellers.  (There are also extreme fans, but it’s another matter).

Hotel guests prefer a state of rest on the beach and/or in  comfortable dwelling.

Tourists, in contrast, prefer a state of straight and uniform movement (it’s only in physics the same thing as rest) when somebody move you from one interesting place to another explaining in passing why you brought just in this place.

The third category fits badly into the framework of organised tourism.
First, because in a tourist cruise you are moving in a dense stream and constantly must squeeze through the crowd of fellow tourists if you want to see something. Secondly, because on excursion you see not countries and not people, but Objects of World Culture. This, of course, is very interesting and even necessary, but it’s not all. Many people want to see more about the country and the people, but you can not do this from the trodden paths of tourist tours. The main tourist sites have an infrastructure already formed around them and it is customised more for tourists tastes than for country features.

There is an opinion in literature criticism that the country and the epoch must be studied not by outstanding literary works, but by the supporting authors. The more talented the writer is, the more he expresses himself, his own individuality. On the contrary, the second-rate writers, who often for some time surpass the popularity of the great ones, express better their current environment, country and era.

The same applies to cities. Every great city has its own soul, different from the soul of their country. Paris is not France, London is not England, Moscow is not Russia, … you name it…

And the man gets off his tourist bus and goes along the roadside (figuratively), because only in this way he can see things not visible from the bus window.

So I’ve decided to start this blog to talk about places which organised tourist excursions at best pass by without stopping.

These are in no way the tourist guides. The guides should be written by people who have lived in this place at least a month to soak up his spirit and grasp in details. Moreover, the guide must contain a lot of practical information – hotels, restaurants, shopping, etc.

I pay minimum attention to these issues because I am unpretentious and follow the principle “You are comfortable where you are” (in no way I urge anyone to follow my example). Therefore, I give the main focus to the history of the place and to its interesting landmarks (from my point of view). If you are interested in it, you can delve into details on numerous web pages. In the Net there is a lot of information about almost every place in Europe. I see my task only in drawing your attention.

I also am addressing inquisitive readers who, having met in the text an unfamiliar word, do not skip it, but dive into Wikipedia (and after half an hour of browsing through interesting articles painfully try to remember what they originally wanted to find). Every place on Earth is inexhaustible, like an atom (by the famous Lenin’s words), and if you are drilling into details, any post turns into a book (and I, it seems, already drag this introduction out).

Two notes in conclusion:

1. This blog is about Europe only. Other continents are far (and expensive) for me and I’m too much interested in Europe.
2. It so happened that I do not drive (which is rather strange for a traveler). Therefore, when reading texts please take into account differences in space perception of driver and pedestrian/cyclist.